wouldbedorothy | eye-rony, weird li'l gale piece / gr ficlet

Title: Eye-rony
Author: wouldbedorothy (AHS)
Rating: PGish
Series/Sequel: nope, just whatever this is
Summary: The irony of Gale Harold's eyes. 660 words.
Author's Notes: Thanks for first look, Lou! I think I added one sentence, lol!
Disclaimer: I don't know G or R, so anything I say is out of my rather odd head.

It was 6 months ago today I posted my first G/R fic! Happy anniversary to me, lol! (Oh, and give me another few days on ITF 10, but I promise it's coming!)

Eye-rony
by AHS

The irony of Gale Harold’s eyes… that can never decide quite what color to be… brown one day, green the next… sometimes both of those, plus gold… and gray… kaleidoscope amber… the leaves in autumn, a warm cotton pullover, and the rainbows in a prism, when the light is right.

They are ironic for at least two reasons.

The first, because Gale Harold rarely looks people in the eye. Oh, it’s different when he’s acting. In a scene, eye contact is necessary to connect and pull forth emotion, which he can most certainly do. But, though they use his eyes, it is always the character doing the looking, not him. He needs the way they let him hide.

Because real life is harder. Every day, people… crowding his consciousness. Still, he hides when he can… under hats pulled low, behind errant locks of hair, layers of facial scruff. Lips held in an unwelcoming line. Pupils wide but pleasantly fogged. He’s gotten very good at giving the impression of looking directly at you… honest to the soul, it bothers him to be thought shifty or unkind due to darting glances… but his gaze is in fact more generally applied, and deceptively quick. Self-preserving, even with friends. It gets him by. But it also keeps him from properly taking in other people’s colors.

There exists only one absolute exception. One pair of eyes he can never skim over and never break away from. Eyes that offer the most safety and the most danger. Cobalt… cerulean… azure… Randy Harrison. Shades of an unwavering truth, pure blue and unconfused. But so… confusing. Gale dives in, again and again, searching for the answer. Finds it… can’t believe… and keeps looking.

Which always leads to the second irony.

Hazel is the name chosen for Gale’s eye color, because that was deemed the most appropriate label for eyes that can’t make up their mind. Can’t be clearly defined or found in the crayon box. He is frustrated by labels that ask anyone to be less, just to fit inside someone else’s easy identification. People are made to be complicated… not one hundred percent one thing, one way, one shade. And that other word he allowed himself to be stamped with no more sums him than his irises add up to brown.

Sexuality, like eye color, is a continuous spectrum. He’d always known that, even with his own footing being pretty firmly established in the more typical direction. But there is knowing, abstractly, like how you know it’d be fucking cool to be a rock star if not for the fact that you’d hate it… and then there’s knowing, on a downright cellular level. Like how Gale knew, when he met Randy… whether he’d been awoken after sleeping too long, or that blue had rearranged his very molecules when it touched him… his life had been changed.

More often even than accusations of grumpy demeanor… and death rays shooting at fans somehow through the walls around him… come accusations in the form of muddled sexual identity. (Oh, his eyes can’t decide, and neither can his dick! That‘s priceless!) Phrased as open-mindedness or deception. His or theirs. Secret love and it’s so obvious lust. His objections come not to the charges but the peering eyes that aren’t made of electric sky.

Thinking isn’t wrong just because it’s wishful. He’s been guilty of the same. But possibilities pop like bubbles looked at too long, and hope can hurt worse than giving up.

He thinks, fuck, maybe it is all wishful thinking. The wanting to be Bowie thing. Bowie also couldn’t make up his mind, in more than one way. Women, men. One brown… green… hazel eye, and one…… blue.

Gale never saw the big deal, never saw the beauty of his own eyes. Never saw them as anything but mud until he saw them reflected in Randy’s blue.

Ironically… maybe just perfectly… the color he was missing.